May 9, 2013

The 31-Day Nail Challenge: Day 6 - Violet Nails

It's Day 6, which means the theme for today is Violet Nails! I decided to give my paint brushes a break for today because there are so many other nail art techniques that I haven't tried yet. Among them are the paint splatter, the jelly sandwich, and the spun sugar. I had a hard time choosing which to use for today's theme because I couldn't decide which technique I was most eager to try. So I just went with a random one and did the splatter nails (but I ended up doing all three of them, anyway, so this is a triple purple post).

The base is 2 coats of The Face Shop PP403, a violet creme.

Once that dried, I went to grab my bottle of nail polish thinner. Unfortunately, I was almost out of the stuff, so I couldn't perform the usual method of making paint splatter nail art. So I tried improvising with a dotting tool. What I did was similar to the method of creating spun sugar nail art. I placed a few drops of polish on a piece of paper, mixed it until it was tacky, then I placed the stringy blobs on my nail at random.

The colors used for the splatter are The Face Shop OR202, The Face Shop YL702, The Face ShopGR 502, and The Face Shop GR 506.

After placing the last blob, I applied a layer of top coat. But I wasn't really feeling the combination of the colors and the overall look of this mani, so I opted for a redo. I wanted to try another technique, so I went with the jelly sandwich.

A jelly sandwich is made by applying alternating layers of a jelly polish and a glitter polish. I used the same base color I used in the first mani, but I mixed in some clear polish to turn the violet creme into a violet jelly. After that layer dried, I applied one layer of The Face Shop PP409, a violet glitter topper in a clear base.

Then after that, I applied another layer of the jelly, then another of the glitter, then jelly, glitter, jelly, and finally, top coat!

I just love how jelly polishes are so glossy! And how jelly sandwiches look so squishy! I will definitely do more jelly sandwich manis in the future!

I don't know what came over me when I decided to try the third technique today, as well. But yeah, I tried the spun sugar method over the jelly sandwich!

I chose two colors based on the colors of the glitter in the sandwich. The teal is Sally Hansen Blue Streak and the silver is Revlon Silver Screen.

I used a short bamboo skewer to spin the "sugar" onto my nails to make the polish look more like strings instead of blobs. I didn't apply any top coat afterwards to keep the 3D look.

As I said earlier, the improvised method I used for the first mani was based on the spun sugar method, but I like this mani better than the first. I'll try the proper method of doing the paint splatter mani when I get more nail polish thinner!

Out of the three manis today, the jelly sandwich is my favorite! Stay tuned tomorrow for the next theme: Black and White Nails!